


The Great Pumpkin Bash

by chucksauce



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, HS AU, High School AU, M/M, Sorry Not Sorry, Teenlock, a lot of people not exactly saying things aloud, graphic descriptions of pumpkin mutilation, halloween party, no scarecrows were harmed in the making of this fic, omg it is probs ridiculously ooc but whatevs, this is probably too american but IDGAF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucksauce/pseuds/chucksauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you get when you combine pumpkin guts and spiked punch? Just your average Halloween fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Pumpkin Bash

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Into_the_Ether](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Into_the_Ether/gifts).



> This fic was done as a Halloween-y prompt for [Into_the_Ether](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Into_the_Ether), who left the 221st comment on another story, _A Wound Unheal'd_. I think she may have expected something a little different, but it's been such a long time since I've gotten to do anything this  silly... Un-beta'd, un-brit-picked. The mistakes (and the spiked punch) is all on me.

John hates “The Monster Mash.” Almost as much as he hates “Witches’ Brew” and “Purple People Eater.” And yet he’s already heard all three of them tonight, along with a few different renditions of “The Addams Family” theme and “Thriller,” while he’s helped Greg set up for this Halloween party. Wasn’t it possible to just play _regular_ music? Or some weird remixes of scary-movie music set to a dance beat? These things exist on Youtube, surely.

Still, he’s borne it with good humour as they inspect the last of the streamers and fake spider-webs. The nearby dining room table stretches beside them, laden with every stereotypical Halloween treat: graveyard-dirt cupcakes with gummy-worms, little pumpkins made from peeled clementines and small wedges of celery, electric-green punch with a hand-shaped chunk of ice floating in it, a bowl of disgusting sour-cream-and-salsa made to look like vomit. The works. If it weren’t for Greg’s mum making it all before his parents had left for a country bonfire, they’d likely just be foraging on half-stale bags of crisps and soda.

“Looks like we’re ready,” Greg tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. He nearly knocks against the dinky quiverfull of arrows hanging from John’s back. “Get the door if anyone comes  in while I’m getting ready, yeah?”

John nods, and wonders for the seventh time that night what Greg’s costume will be.

He also wonders why he’d insisted he and Sherlock come to this party, rather than do what Sherlock had wanted, which was to go exploring the abandoned houses on the outskirts of town.

Well, he knows the answer to that one, at least. This is one of the few parties marking the dwindling time between himself and heading off to the army at the end of the school-year. He has to make this year count.

 

Sally arrives first, hair teased until it stands with a life of its own, with little clips artfully disguised to make the shocks of white at her temples seem like a natural part of the mass. Bride of Frankenstein. Not exactly original, but she makes it work.

She’s got Molly on her arm, the timid girl she’s been friends with since fourth year, who certainly makes for the shyest vampire bombshell John’s ever seen. Surely that had been Sally’s idea, too.

Molly pulls at the hem of her clingy red halter top as she gives her little wave, a swoop of her head as she resists the urge to look down at the ground rather than actually meet his eye.

Sally clears her throat. “Is _he_ here yet?”

She doesn’t need to say a name for John to know exactly who she’s talking about. Sally and Sherlock have been rivals at school since before John could remember, arguing down to the last point to outdo each other for GPA. It’d only been in the past year they’d lanced their acquaintanceship and let the vitriol seep free, and it’s still odd to see them actually get along. Well, for a given quantity of _get along_. They still bait one another mercilessly, but now it’s less caustic.

John shakes his head. “No idea. He was supposed to be here with Greg and me, setting up.”

Sally rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Typical. Where’s the punch?”

 

# # # # #

 

When Sherlock does finally make an appearance, an hour later, the party’s in full-swing. Greg--dressed (for God knows what reason) as a “sexy cop”--and Mike--who’s come as Cupid--have gone from leading a game of bobbing for apples to bobbing for beer-bottles. Other classmates mingle or dance in the small clear area in the front room, and John’s holding court in the kitchen with some story or another from the last rugby game.

Sherlock flexes his shoulders, trying to find some give in the too-tight black doublet he’s rented from the fancy-dress shop. The hose are little better, clinging to him like a second skin.

John sees him as soon as he enters the kitchen, and his face falls into a weird mask of conflicting annoyance and attraction.

“Who’re you supposed to be, then?” Sally asks, scanning him over from head to toe. “The black death?”

But Molly pipes up, pointing to John’s costume. “They’re Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Oh, that’s clever!”

Sherlock smirks. “See, John? I knew it would be more recognisable than Will Scarlett.”

John clenches his jaw and goes back to his story, pointedly ignoring Sherlock.

Sherlock rolls his eyes and retreats to the dining room for some of the rather unimaginative snacks laid out there.

 _This party will be torture,_ he thinks, his mood already souring.

Of course John would be annoyed. Clearly everything has to be just so, what with this half-cocked notion that everything had to be one hundred percent more memorable this year.

This explained the complimentary themed costumes and the fact that they were at this terrible party in the first place.

He lets out a huff as he samples the punch. Then he grimaces.

Lime kool-aid, sprite, and just a lot too much vodka. It’s disgusting. He deposits it onto the cheap spiders-and-bats paper tablecloth and slips outside.

  
  


# # # # #

 

Autumn chill seeps from the little concrete stoop outside the Lestrades’ house and through Sherlock’s hose with little resistance. Stars pinprick the dark. Primary-school children shift in shoals like fish from one house to the next, cheerfully extorting the neighbors for candy.

Sherlock shakes his head, reaches for his pack of cigarettes.

John’s been on him to quit since before they got together. What does it matter, if John’s just going away? What does it matter, if John’s so bloody preoccupied with getting this year “right” that he gets his knickers in a twist over something as stupid as a Halloween costume?

Just as the orange glow of flame hits the end of his cigarette and the first cloud of smoke escapes him, a pirate of maybe eleven years old runs up to him.

“Sherlock!”

The child in question is Billy, a neighbor-kid who decided years ago that he adored Sherlock.

“Hmm?” Sherlock asks, blowing his smoke upward to avoid Billy as much as he can manage.

Billy frowns into his cheap beard. “Who’re you dressed as? William Shakespeare?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. Was _everyone_ going to make some sort of issue out of his costume? “What did you need?”

“Someone’s been going ‘round the neighborhood smashing all the pumpkins and wrecking the decorations. You’ve got to stop ‘em!”

Sherlock looks back toward the party he’s abandoned, then studies Billy’s ridiculous doe-eyes again. The weight of such a small problem on a small child--he can spare the half-hour it’ll take to catch whatever idiot has been up to mischief.

The front door slams behind him as he rises from the stoop.

“What’d you do to piss him off?”

Sally. And for once, she isn’t goading him. She sounds concerned, if only barely. In any event, she doesn’t need to specify for Sherlock to know she means John.

“What’s he gotten up to?” Sherlock takes another drag of his cigarette and turns, blowing it downwind away from both of them.

Sally wrinkles her nose at his bad habit, but says nothing about it. “He’s determinedly not sulking. What’d you do?”

“I didn’t wear the costume he wanted.”

Sally frowns. “That’s it?”

Sherlock nods.

Billy chooses that moment to pipe up. “Sherlock--you’re going to help, right?”

Sherlock eyes the Bride of Frankenstein standing beside him on the stoop. “What do you say, Sally? My usual partner in crime is off _not sulking_. Care to solve a mystery and save the day?”

Sally laughs. “Isn’t this like yours and John’s version of forepla--er,” she glances at Billy.

“It’s all right,” Billy cuts in. His eyes gleam, and Sherlock can tell he just likes being around older people who might not censor themselves. Such is the thrill of pre-pubescence.

Sherlock shrugs. “I could teach you a thing or two about deductive reasoning,” he teases.

Sally looks back at the door, obviously considering Molly.

“Molly will do just fine with Greg on her own,” Sherlock insists.

“All right, fine. You’re on, freak.”

The smile on Billy’s face is unmistakable.

 

# # # # #

 

John hates lime kool-aid. He hates the punch even worse, but it is better than the keg of shitty beer one of his rugby mates has smuggled in. Well, better in the sense that it’s more effective. He tosses another little cupful back, bites off a grimace. What’d they used, Popov? Whatever it is, it’s godawful.

Speaking of godawful, what was going on with Sherlock? He hadn’t so much as said hi before disappearing. It suits John just fine. They didn’t have to be up each others arses all the time--that was important in a relationship, right? Being able to function separately? It made a relationship healthy, made it last longer.

They’ll certainly be separate come spring.

He pushes the thought away, absolutely bent on not being a sad drunk.

Still, he probably already is acting like a sad drunk--not too many happy drunks really holed themselves up with the extra soda bottle’s worth of spiked punch and their friend’s dog in said friend’s bedroom during a party.

John’s vision swims a bit, and he shakes his head. That’s definitely enough punch.

A light tapping on the door heralds a mousy brown head, artfully teased. Molly sticks her upper half into the doorway, her mouth settling into that weird pinched expression she sometimes wears when Sherlock has said something particularly obtuse.

“Mind some company?”

John shrugs, and Greg’s mutt jumps off the bed to greet her.

 _Traitor_ , John thinks.

Molly sits gingerly on the end of the bed. The dark smudges of kohl under her eyes have already started to spread. She looks less like a wily vampire seductress and more like an adorably rumpled goth raccoon.

“What’s he done this time?” The way she cocks her head does nothing to dispel the raccoon image.

John huffs, trying to find the sharp edge of his anger again, the indignation he’d felt earlier. The punch has worn that down to a blunt thing. “We _agreed_ to come as Robin Hood and Will Scarlett. He promised me. He doesn’t even care about this stupid holiday--why should it matter what he dressed up like, if it was only to humor me anyway?”

Molly raises an eyebrow and glances down. She pulls the soda bottle away from him. “Is that so?”

The way she says it rubs John the wrong way. He shifts, feels the first chafe of that old indignation. “What?”

Molly does that _thing_ again, where she ducks her head and draws her shoulders in just to make herself smaller. “What does it matter what he dressed up like, if he’s going to spend the time with you?”

“Well he’s not, is he?” John snaps.

Molly winces but holds her ground. “This isn’t about Halloween costumes, is it?”

John focuses on the little stash of mecha figurines he’d sworn a million years ago he’d keep secret for Greg. A distant part of him finds the irony in the fact that Molly is with him now, that secret theoretically wide open to his crush. Maybe it’s for the best that Molly is still frowning at John. Greg’s secret is safe.

Molly sighs and rests a light hand on John’s green-hosed knee. “It’s hurting him, too. You can’t forget that.”

John hates that she doesn’t need to say _what_. That it’s so obvious to anyone else.

So he doesn’t say anything.

After a minute of expectant silence, Molly rises from the bed. She retreats from the room with little more than, “You should come back downstairs. It won’t be the same without you.”

John knows she means more than a Halloween party, too. He hates that she doesn’t need to say it.

 

# # # # #

 

Billy races ahead of them, weaving between groups of children with sacks full-to-bursting with candy, pointing out the destroyed decorations. Sherlock glances back at Sally before darting off after.

Scene after gruesome scene becomes apparent rather quickly: countless gardens lay desecrated in flour and toilet paper; very few faux spiderwebs, fake ghosts, or balsa-wood tombstones are left intact. The gory innards of many tasteful pumpkins are splattered on stoops. Innocent jack-o-lanterns lay in pieces, their once-joyful smiles now fragmented and stretched like the death-grins of skulls. One house had been home to a cheerful scarecrow--but the poor thing had been decapitated, removed from its post, and impaled through its abdomen, its head resting atop its body like a grim spoil of war.

Occasionally they arrive too late, the surviving families of these atrocities having gathered in the garden, the candy-bowl abandoned by the door to heartless, greedy trick-or-treaters as they mourn their murdered gourds and mutilated decor.

If it is possible, Sally’s bedside manner is _worse_ than Sherlock’s, leaving him to awkwardly pat the shoulders of crying children while swearing their losses would be avenged.

After one particularly inconsolable young girl, Sherlock pulls Sally and Billy over to confer.

“The damages seem to be done by two people, in order to accomplish it so quickly. These two would be pre-teens or teenagers--old enough to get around without supervision and to feel estranged enough from their peers to be malicious.”

Billy clears his throat. “There are are these two bullies--I mean, it may not be them--”

“Out with it.”

“One of ‘em lives two houses down from me. Jimmy. Him and his buddy Sebastian like to mess with the under-tens.”

“Show me the way.”

So Billy darts off again, back vaguely toward his house and Lestrade’s.

 

# # # # #

 

John totters a bit as he plods back toward the party. Thank _God_ for handrails. Greg’s dog bounds down, nearly tripping him as he runs down the stairs. _Traitor_ , John thinks again.

He will find Sherlock, who is probably either still sulking by the punch bowl or else pissing someone off with his deductions, and John will apologise even though he doesn’t feel particularly sorry. It’s still better than being in a strop all night.

“Hey mate!” Greg calls, and John fights not to gawk: Greg has lost the clip-on tie that went with the sexy cop uniform, and now is clad in nothing but the short-shorts, the hat, and the shirt--which is unbuttoned to approximately his navel.

Nearby, Molly is unable to breathe. Or do much of anything other than drink it in.

John realizes he can’t breathe either--he is giggling far too hard for it, and can only resort to pointing at Greg. Surely his idiot friend knew about his shirt, right?

 _Sherlock_ , John thinks. _Sod Greg’s uniform. Gotta find Sherlock._

Easier said than done when intoxicated, John finds. Has yet to find that familiar bush of black hair or hear that deep voice. Sherlock isn’t in the dining room, the kitchen, sitting room, or any of the toilets. He isn’t even out on the stoop.

Someone is, though. Two punk-looking kids, maybe 14 and 15, are stomping the Lestrades’ pumpkins.

“Oi!” John snaps. “What the hell--”

The smaller of the two looks up, slaps his friend’s shoulder, and they both turn to haul arse. Even drunk as he is, John is still faster.

“Nope!” He grunts as he catches the smaller one by the ear--an effective maneuver his mum had used on him many a time in his younger days--and the bigger one by the elbow.

The big one, a barrel-chested kid taller than John, nearly wrenches away, but John snags the back of his shirt and wrestles him into a headlock. The small one starts grappling with John’s arm to free his ear.

By this point a small crowd has begun to form--party guests from inside have spilled out to watch the tussle. He’d forgotten to shut the door.

Greg wastes no time, tagging in to grab the big guy.

 

# # # # #

 

Sherlock’s ridiculous fancy-dress boots slap the tarmac as they speed back toward Billy’s house. The cold air burns in his lungs.

Beside him, Sally laughs. “This is the most ridiculous--”

But just then they pass Lestrade’s house--and the large crowd amassed in the front garden.

John and Greg are wrestling a second- and third-year and--

_Destroyed pumpkin littering the stoop, ages are a match--_

“Billy, are those Jimmy and Sam, the boys--”

“Sebastian. Yeah, it’s them!” Billy responds. “Holy shit--”

“Hey, language!” Sally snaps, but it’s obvious it’s more of a habit than anything. Sherlock knows she has younger twin brothers.

Billy just laughs. “You got them!”

John’s head jerks up, his eyes widening as he takes in the trio standing just in the street. “Where the hell have _you_ been?”

Just then Molly steps out, sees the entire assembly, and just walks back into the house--obviously this is too much for her delicate sensibilities.

“Tracking down these vandals,” Sherlock says, straightening his posture. “Thank you for catching them.”

“You should call the cops,” Billy suggests. “But--not _that_ guy--”

He’s pointing at Lestrade.

“Oi!” Greg calls, but good-naturedly.

The excitement over, people begin filing back into the house. Someone starts the music back up, and soon it’s just John with the small one by the ear, Greg headlocking the big one, Billy and Sherlock and Sally all standing there.

“Someone give me their phone. I’ll call.” Sally sticks her hand out, and Sherlock is surprised to find that he is actually putting his mobile into her hand. Not even John had managed to unlock that achievement.

She dials the number while the two hooligans pitch an unholy fit.

“We’ll tell them you beat us up!” - “You can’t restrain us like this!” - “My father will _sue_!” comes the litany from the smaller one.

“I swear I will punch you in the ballocks!” and so forth from the big one.

 

# # # # #

 

Hours later, after the cops were called on Jimmy and Sebastian, after the party had carried on and both John and Sherlock had specifically _not_ mentioned their disagreement from before, John and Sherlock are now ensconced in Sherlock’s bedroom.

Sherlock struggles to undo the doublet, and John has to help him. Sherlock can feel John stroke the nap of the fabric once he’s done with the zipper.

“I _am_ sorry about earlier,” John murmurs.

The air in the bedroom is warm, but a chill pinches between Sherlock’s shoulder blades. “I know.”

“I just--”

“It’s all right, John. I know that too.”

“Yeah?” John sounds equal parts shamed and relieved to not have to explain himself aloud.

Sherlock lets the moment draw out for just a bit longer. “I do, yes.”

They stay there like that a second, John behind Sherlock, hand on his back, but Sherlock turns and gently catches John’s wrist. He lifts it, kisses the soft skin along the inner wrist, right where he can feel John’s pulse jump and tic.

“You want this last year to be special,” Sherlock says. “I want that too. I know the rest of this evening has been rather bizarre, but there’s still some salvaging tonight.” He can feel the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

John smirks, licks his lips. “Yeah? How’s that?”

Sherlock leans forward, and with uncharacteristic humour, whispers, “You could let the Sheriff of Nottingham plunder Sherwood Forest…”

John snorts. “That is the _worst_ euphamism for sex you’ve ever--”

But Sherlock cuts him off with a kiss.

Maybe the next few months will be their last for a while, but they can push that away. Just for tonight.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoy making friends with strangers on the internet. Come by and say hi!
> 
>   * [**My Fandom Tumblr**](http://chucksauce.tumblr.com) for all manner of crying about fictional characters and laughing at shitposts
>   * **[My Fic Rec Blog](http://spoilersauce.tumblr.com)** , if you're into multifandom recs.
>   * **[Under-London](http://under-london.com/)** , the original serialized novel I'm working on for cheap-as-free!
>   * **[My Twitter](http://twitter.com/chucksauce221)** , where I basically live when I'm not writing...
> 



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